Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years. Stephen Jay Gould
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience. Joan Didion
Sure, I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life. Ben Affleck
Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise. Stanislav Grof
The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience. Huston Smith
The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. Michael Crichton